Alejandro Mayorkas still believes in the promise of America’s immigrants

Beyond America’s southern border, a new wave of migrants to the United States is reshaping communities across the country, fueling economic growth in the heartland and upending local politics from its smallest towns to its largest cities.

In Columbia, South Carolina, voters say immigration has become their top priority in the upcoming presidential election, despite having one of the smallest migrant populations in the nation. In rural Kansas, state lawmakers are pushing for a border crackdown as local farmers beg Congress to pass bipartisan immigration reform that would resolve a desperate shortage of agricultural labor. And in central California, a migrant Latino population deeply rooted in the local culture is grappling with the impacts of a new generation of arrivals.

The historic migration surge has rewired American politics ahead of the 2024 election and defined the tenure of President Joe Biden’s secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, who, despite a political onslaught from Republicans, maintains a rare optimism in Washington over the promise of immigration in America and the prospects for reform.

“Immigration has been a place of political resort to really engender anger and emotions,” Mayorkas said in an interview with McClatchy, “but if people look at it fairly and squarely, this nation has prospered because of legal immigration.”

The recent influx of migrants — the largest in modern American history — reflects not just a broken immigration system unable to handle record encounters at the border with Mexico, but a trend of instability across the Western Hemisphere that bears no signs of relief.

Polls suggest nearly half of Americans believe this new wave of migrants will make the country worse off in the long run. And yet, over the next decade, net migration is set to increase U.S. gross domestic product by roughly $7 trillion and increase revenues by $1 trillion, according to a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office.

To Mayorkas, the solutions are clear. And so are the politics.

“There are leaders who want to deliver a solution for the American people, and there are officials who want to continue the problem to be able to really just communicate slogans,” he said. “We need solutions. The American people deserve solutions.”

ROOT CAUSES AND LEGISLATIVE ACTIONS

Sitting down for an interview at DHS headquarters in Washington, Mayorkas pushed back against criticism that the Biden administration could do more on its own through executive action to resolve the crisis.

“We’ve issued regulations to strengthen our enforcement operations in a number of different ways. Our executive actions have been challenged in the courts, just as the prior administration’s executive actions were challenged in the courts,” he said. “The enduring solution, the solution that will last and fix the system, is congressional action.”

Earlier this year, Mayorkas worked closely with Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the Senate on a bipartisan package that, if passed, would have been the strictest and most sweeping reform to U.S. immigration law since the 1990s.

The bill, endorsed by the conservative National Border Patrol Council, would have provided funding for additional Customs and Border Protection personnel, detention beds, asylum officers and immigration judges. It would have given the president explicit authority to shut the border in the event of a concentrated surge, while raising the bar required for migrants to claim asylum.

It was a package that drew ire from immigration advocates on the progressive left, angered by the new standards it would require of asylum seekers. But the effort ultimately collapsed under pressure from the right, after former President Donald Trump directed Republican lawmakers to oppose it out of the gate, calling it a “great gift” to Democrats.

“There was a bipartisan group of senators that delivered an extraordinary solution to the challenge of border security, just recently, and it provided unprecedented funding for our Department of Homeland Security, which we desperately need,” Mayorkas said.

“It was an extraordinary package,” he said, “and yet, it was killed before it even arrived.”

There have also been sporadic, bipartisan efforts to peel off a separate bill that would address labor shortages in America’s farming and agriculture industry from the more politically daunting task of tackling border security. Reforms to the legal immigration system could open up new pathways to those seeking entry into the United States, slowing illegal crossings. But that, too, has faced resistance from Republicans adamant on a comprehensive bill.

The Biden administration is facing a far greater number of migrant arrivals than its predecessors, with U.S. officials on several occasions registering over 200,000 encounters a month. Yet the conditions and obstacles to fixing the country’s immigration system are familiar: a reliance on third parties, particularly Congress and foreign governments, to agree to coordinate a response.

Unlike previous surges, migrants arriving in large numbers throughout Biden’s presidency have not come from countries with governments friendly to the United States — such as Guatemala, Mexico and El Salvador — but from those with virtually no diplomatic relations with Washington, such as Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, further aggravating the administration’s attempts to address root causes and facilitate deportations.

“The number of displaced people throughout our hemisphere — in fact, throughout the world — is historic,” Mayorkas said, noting, in one prime example, that nearly a third of Venezuela’s 28 million nationals have fled the country.

“Where we do not have strong diplomatic relationships, it is more difficult,” he added.

The administration has worked with allies in the region to receive nationals from hostile countries deported from the United States. But U.S. officials fear some leaders in the region have been weaponizing immigration as a political tool against Washington, with Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro turning direct deportation flights on and off based on the status of his talks with the administration, and with Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega quietly facilitating migrant flows.

“The root causes are well known: Economic despair, repressive regimes, the impacts of climate change, violence to name just four,” Mayorkas said. “The idea is to invest in these countries, trying to contribute to their well-being and their sense of safety and security, so that people do not feel compelled to flee their homes.”

CHANGING ATTITUDES

The recent murder of a 22 year-old nursing student in Georgia and slaying of a 43 year-old former police officer in Florida, both allegedly at the hands of migrants, have fueled a national narrative belying the statistics that illegal aliens are fueling a spike in violent crime.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has embraced the narrative, referring to the phenomenon as “migrant crime.” It is a characterization that Mayorkas roundly rejects.

“My immediate response is one for the victims, the families of the victims, the loved ones of the victims — obviously our hearts break,” Mayorkas said. “We also want to ensure that the perpetrators of the crimes are held accountable, and the full force of the law is brought to bear against them.”

But, he added, “the actions of criminals should not characterize the entire population of individuals who seek to arrive in the United States.”

American attitudes toward immigration have evolved since the migrant surge became apparent in major U.S. cities — a phenomenon Mayorkas attributes to the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, who he says has engaged in “irresponsible public conduct” for his program of bussing migrants across state lines without coordination with local officials at their destinations.

“The number of individuals arriving at our border is at a significant level, and we are also dealing with a state official who is purposefully not communicating and collaborating with other state officials in an effort to create chaos and disorder,” Mayorkas said, in a veiled reference to Abbott.

And yet, today, it is not just Republican voters who are telling pollsters that immigration is a priority, but Democrats as well.

“What we need is a solution,” he added, acknowledging bipartisan frustration with the ongoing crisis. “We understand the strain on interior cities, of course, when they receive in an uncoordinated way — a deliberately uncoordinated way, migrants into their communities, and the financial burden that that imposes.”

The Senate’s bipartisan immigration package, Mayorkas noted, would have provided financial aid to those interior cities to help absorb an increase in migrant arrivals.

“I continue to be hopeful that it will pass,” he said.

Republicans lawmakers have eyed Mayorkas as a prime target for investigation and impeachment ever since they took the House majority in 2022, sensing a political opening to spotlight the border crisis.

In February, amid bipartisan opposition, House GOP leadership secured a majority to impeach Mayorkas with just a single vote, charging him with high crimes and misdemeanors over claims that he willfully failed to uphold the nation’s immigration laws. He is the first cabinet secretary to face articles of impeachment in 148 years.

Tomorrow, House impeachment managers are scheduled to walk the articles over to the Senate, where a bipartisan majority is expected to dismiss them as baseless — possibly before a trial even begins.

“The senators are going to fulfill their responsibility,” he said. “I am confident of that. I am confident in the job that I am doing, the focus that I have on the work.”

“I am not distracted by the impeachment proceedings,” he added. “There is too much work across the entire mission set of the Department of Homeland Security that can ill afford my distraction.”